>> don't want you to lose your job because you don't agree with me.
But lots of people want that power. It is within living memory that people could be fired or denied employment based on thier religion. Many today still want thier religion beliefs to be enforced against believers and non-believers alike (abortion, education, marriage, adoption, right to die etc). Not every person of faith is so liberal about the affairs of others. Many call for a return to a past where religious "values" were enforced by the state at the point of a sword.
And most of us agree that it's bad. But most of us somehow don't agree that forcing wokeness on others is bad. Because the woke ones can't possibly imagine being wrong. Theirs is the right way, everyone else are bigots and racists. It's an aggressive religion, a cult even.
Most of us are good, and the few extremists don't represent who we are.
Most of them can't possibly imagine being wrong. They're fanatical cultists.
Here's the problem: These two paragraphs are unrestricted opinions, it's a feeling that anyone could have about anyone, and there's nothing factual about it.
This is a feeling that's not rooted in falsifiable observations, and so, there is nothing that prevents the same thought from applying to any other group of people.
And that's where the symmetry hurts. Maybe they, the other people, maybe they feel the same way about you? That you can't imagine being wrong, that you're fanatical.
Wouldn't that make them hypocrites, for painting all those people with the same brushtroke? For making generalizations about people without bringing anything to support those? Without any desire to see yourself proven wrong?
I think that someone's words would suffuse hypocrisy, were they to neglect disloging the beam in their own eye, before looking for the mote in their brother's eye.
I am condemning Christian fanatics. You are however writing abstract apologetics for woke cultists instead of condemning them. That's the difference between us. No need for all this mental gymnastics imagining that most other people on "my side" are worse than me and on "your side" better than you. At least do your own part.
That’s only the woke people you hear about. I consider myself pretty woke and the only woke thing I could imagine to demand from a workplace is sexual harassment policies with real teeth. (And not a he said she said scenario but Eg. Dont pinch the ass of your direct report against their consent or else you’re out of the door).
I think there are people who take it too far just like there are people who take anything too far. But clearly to me wokeness hasn’t stopped Eg. Blizzard-Activision for all their woke PR so I’m skeptical that wokeness has nearly as much influence as is often implied.
Was'nt sexual harassment recognized as wrong much before this 'woke' thing became popular...
What then did 'woke' bring to the table?
Increased awareness? action without trial? -- even here we have a mixed bag, we want some trial of sorts, otherwise accusations would fly all over.
Those who rail against 'woke' are not railing in favor of the perpetrators in the me-too cases.
In many solutions, there are pros and cons of policies, and quite hard to just nail them.
The rational people among both those who are woke and those opposed -- should identify those that are clearly detrimental to society without equivalent benefits.
One such group - the influence of the college administrators -- comes to mind. This segment is already a major cause of college fees inflation, and now is also identified in bolstering the extreme woke actions. Also, because they are management, they are not going to fix themselves.
This is where external actors need to step in to clean up the mess.
It would be easier to listen to concerns about creeping wokeness if the alleged dangers were actually different and worse than the problems that already exist. In many states people are fired from their jobs for not being conservative, for being lgbt etc. It happens with full knowledge of the state and is completely legal; the media doesn't even bother trying to follow up. Worse than that: our prison system, our overseas military belligerence etc etc. Wokeness? Add it to the list I guess, but the only reason some people spend so much time screeching about it is because they have been lucky to avoid getting nailed by one of the many other long-lived dangers that continue to stalk our society.
It's human nature to ignore the excesses of your own tribe and focus on problems originating across the border, but when it's just pure hypocrisy (another feature of human nature) it's hard to really give a shit. If we were discussing an asteroid hurtling toward the planet I'd like to think we could reach some kind of rough consensus that it is indeed an imminent threat, although my confidence in even this contrived scenario playing out as one might hope has been significantly shaken the more time I spend around large groups of humans. When it comes to trying to mediate the culture war, while real injustices occur on both sides and should punished/prevented, the fact remains that justice is often slow or absent for many, if not most. The truly powerful in our society are conveniently immune from the petty struggles, happy to watch the little people tear each other apart over skin color or religion or anything at all.
You know how woke people say that being silent about racism you see is being complicit in it? Well it goes both ways. My woke-tending friends refuse to express any opinion condemning any of the woke bullshit, never happened even once. I wonder if that's because they agree with all of that bullshit, or if they're afraid of speaking their mind for dear of being labelled a racist by their own peers. End result is the same though.
True that. I was told to shut it at work, and not just in a private 1 on 1, and nobody moved. corportate American and their employees cowardice in action Behind curtains of course. No reporter to come ask. The signs of tyrany are clear.
Yes but their reputation probably wasn’t completely destroyed which allowed them to find another job I would guess. Not the case with this woke outrage thing.
Perhaps, but that's still not something we consider state action. People lose their jobs or reputation all the time, and we don't consider it worthy of redress.
Many people appreciate the American right to refuse service to anyone; this is that same impulse exercised towards racists and bigots.
Time heals most wounds. Although it may feel like their reputation was "completely destroyed", I think many will find that they can get another job, once the immediate thunder and fury blows over.
Gee why does crime happen when we have laws against it!?
Good luck suing a Twitter mob or some activist/student who has no assets but can crowdfund a legal defense fund overnight which they won't need because there will be a line of lawyers wanting to represent them pro bono.
Also riling up a smear campaign does not necessarily rise to the level of defamation. You can get fired for simply having the wrong opinions. I'm sure you have no trouble seeing this as a problem when it's the people you like suffering that. Headline: BLM activist fired from their job for saying woke shit. Much outrage. Oh wait they just need a defamation suit. All good then. Right.
Yes, it happens. It's the nature of an employer / employee relationship; being a BLM activist isn't a protected class, and in only a few states does he have any legal recourse (in California, there's a law against firing a person for political affiliation). We definitely have a system where political activism is something those who have plenty to defend themselves or nothing to lose are best suited to engage in. I wouldn't have recommended to him he do this if he couldn't afford to lose his job.
I think you may have lost the thread though... I was talking about false accusations. Defamation would not help in a case like this one, as truth is always an affirmative defense.
The other point you raise (crowdsourced harassment) is trickier. IIUC, you could sue someone with deep pockets for that... "I heard what I was saying from someone else" is not a defamation defense. But a lot of the mob is bankrupt judgement-proof types.
Defamation isn't the worst of it. There's an ocean of normalcy between wokeness and alt-right, people forget that. It's ok to have different opinions on equity vs equality, on social norms, etc. You're not a racist bigot for not supporting every woke cause, despite what they claim. Yet having the wrong opinions will easily get you fired if you cross some woke activist on twitter or at your workplace / university. This isn't something a lawsuit or a thousand lawsuits can fix. It's the new repressive culture we're heading towards.
I think it's more the same repressive culture we've always been in, but new centers of power have emerged in it. Different people, as a result, are now feeling what was always there.
You could always be fired for doing something embarrassing to your boss (witness the example of the BLM protester who worked at a library and shared a book-burning video). But the "woke" now have enough social / economic clout to cause a big enough stir to shift the window on what's embarrassing to a boss. Whereas in the past, for example, inappropriate activity with a subordinate was swept under the rug "for the good of the corporation" (but having the wrong hairstyle could get you fired), now enough people agree such rug-sweeping shall no longer be tolerated (while hairstyle standards were probably racist) and corporations have reacted to new incentives.
But lots of people want that power. It is within living memory that people could be fired or denied employment based on thier religion. Many today still want thier religion beliefs to be enforced against believers and non-believers alike (abortion, education, marriage, adoption, right to die etc). Not every person of faith is so liberal about the affairs of others. Many call for a return to a past where religious "values" were enforced by the state at the point of a sword.